Life for triple killer who stood to inherit €49m

A SWISS man who stood to inherit real estate worth $78 million (€49m) was convicted of killing three women, including his adoptive mother and sister, and sentenced to life in prison.

The sordid family drama in the posh lakeside town of Vevey reads like an Agatha Christie mystery and has gripped sedate western Switzerland.

After a week-long trial, the jury of a Vevey criminal court found the 44-year-old man guilty of triple murder.

He was identified only as Francois L under a Swiss convention whereby the last names of defendants and victims are not published.

His adoptive mother Ruth L, an 81-year-old widow whose architect husband amassed prime property along the shore of Lake Geneva, is thought to have been killed on Christmas Eve 2005, along with her elderly Peruvian friend, Marina S.

Their battered bodies were found at the bottom of steep cellar stairs in the family home on January 4, 2006.

Ruth L was clutching a tuft of hair from her daughter Marie-Jose, a 60-year-old doctor missing ever since and presumed dead.

Prosecutor Eric Cottier told the court the accused had a “frenzied taste for money”. The Indian-born defendant always denied his guilt and is to appeal.

Francois L, a nurse with heavy mortgage debts, first told police he had not been at the huge family home on Christmas Eve.

After his DNA was detected on his mother’s torn nightgown, he said he had found the two bodies and his hysterical sister Marie-Jose that night but had left.